Seduced by story : the use and abuse of narrative /

Brooks, a comparative literature professor at Yale, provides a bracing and insightful look at the downsides of reducing everything to storytelling in this follow-up to 1984's Reading for the Plot. While Brooks still believes that "our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with narrative," he warns thats storytelling has evolved--"Narrative seems to have become accepted as the only form of knowledge and speech that regulates human affairs," he writes. To support that thesis, Brooks cites examples ranging from the "backstories" on personal care product packaging to the way George W. Bush described his cabinet choices in 2000 as each having "their own story." To Brooks, the reduction of everything to narrative improperly dismisses other vital forms of "presentation and understanding," including lyrics and logical arguments. Despite fascinating references to Sherlock Holmes, The Girl on the Train, and Miller beer ads, not all sections are lay-reader friendly, as Brooks lapses into the academic ("I don't think it is pedantic to urge that a fundamental distinction advanced by the Russian Formalists remains crucial to any serious discussion of narrative: the distinction between fabula and sjuzhet"). However, readers who stay the course will find this is a thoughtful and revelatory analysis of what's lost when story trumps all. (Oct.)

A rigorous exploration of narrative, from its usage in classic literature to its misuse in contemporary discourse. In 1984, Brooks published Reading for the Plot, in which he argued that we live in "an episodic, sometimes semiconscious, but virtually uninterrupted monologue" and have situated ourselves "at the intersection of several stories not yet completed." Decades later, the author senses a problem that warrants this follow-up book: In our world of 24-hour media, narrativity has run amok. Weary of "the storification of reality," Brooks seeks a way forward that recognizes facts and storytelling as two separate concepts. "The universe is not our stories about the universe," he explains, "even if those stories are all we have. Swamped in story as we seem to be, we may lose the distinction between the two, asserting the dominion of our constructed realities over the real thing." Now, he laments, "story…has entered the orbit of political cant and corporate branding." To better understand this new engagement with storytelling, the author proposes an "analytic unpacking of the claims for narrative." These whirlwind essays span centuries of literature, from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747) to Paula Hawkins' thriller The Girl on the Train (2015). Brooks extrapolates ideas of narrative veracity, character, speaker, and audience, all while conscientiously maintaining his collection's accessibility. Even readers who are not yet familiar with Proust or Faulkner will find stable footing in these essays despite their many erudite digressions throughout the canon. In the final piece, the author shifts from novels to the legal world and chillingly recounts how the Supreme Court can disparately interpret its cases by widening or constricting the "narrative circle" of a particular situation. He closes with a plea: "We need, more than ever, the reflective knowledge that the humanities can provide, very much including analysis of the dominant stories of our economics, our ethics, our politics." An enlightening challenge to readers curious about literary theory and its real-world applications. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.